Interim Management Statement
At the Annual General Meeting to be held at 10.00 today, Ishbel Macpherson, Chairman, will give the following update on the Group's progress since the start of the current financial year.
"Despite continued challenges in the UK economy, performance in the first quarter was satisfactory. At a Group level, revenue for the 3 months to 30 June 2013 decreased by 0.8% on the same period last year.
In the UK and Ireland division, which constitutes 93% of Group revenues, the continued strategy of developing the services revenue, combined with focus on the growth sectors of water, waste, energy and transport, has underpinned a resilient performance considering the difficulties that remain in the general construction sector. Additionally, the National Grid contract started well. The prior year period was positively impacted by significant infrastructure spend ahead of the Olympics and, as a result, revenue decreased by 2.6% against the first quarter FY13.
The International division has seen an encouraging start to the year with revenues in the first quarter 30% ahead of the prior year period. This has been driven by continued growth in oil and gas projects and the ZADCO project progressing in line with our expectations. Speedy has a strong pipeline of further opportunities in our target sectors of oil and gas and government-funded infrastructure which provide the International division with a good platform from which to make further progress in FY14 and beyond.
Speedy has continued to drive through the benefits from its efficiency programmes within the property network, which, along with the logistics strategy, are building a solid platform for future growth. Strategic capex continues to be focussed on growth sectors and in support of key contracts.
The UK economy remains under pressure, but we continue to focus on specific UK sectors, grow our services offering, support our efficiency programmes and improve the scale and performance of the International division. The Group is trading in line with management expectations for the full year and the Board remains confident that it is well positioned for the future."
Future announcements
Speedy will issue its Interim Results for the 6 months ended 30 September 2013 on 12 November 2013 and will issue a Trading Update on 17 October 2013.